1 Chronicles 16

With the ark set in its tent, David’s first act is sacrifice and bread. He offers burnt offerings and peace offerings, then deals to every man and woman of Israel a loaf, a portion of flesh, and a flagon of wine. The presence has come to rest, and the people are fed at the table of the King. It is a small foretaste of the marriage supper — the whole nation provisioned from the hand of the anointed one who reigns where the throne of Yahweh dwells.

The second attempt began with six experimental steps. The bearers lifted the ark on the staves, went six paces, and stopped — and when nothing struck them down, the king offered oxen and fatlings (2 Sam 6:13), and the procession knew it was moving by the will of Yahweh. Six paces of trembling obedience, then sacrifice, then the shout. Nothing about the second attempt was casual; the men who had buried Uzza tested every step of the road.

The heart of the chapter is the psalm delivered to Asaph, stitched together from what we now read as Psalms 105, 96, and 106. It opens give thanks unto Yahweh, call upon his name; it urges seek Yahweh and his strength, seek his face continually; it commands Israel to remember his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations — the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob named in order. Worship here is memory: the called people rehearsing the promises so they do not forget whose they are.

Then the psalm widens past Israel to the nations. Declare his glory among the heathen, his marvellous works among all people. The gods of the peoples are idols, but Yahweh made the heavens; let the heavens be glad, the sea roar, the fields rejoice, the trees of the wood sing — before Yahweh, because he cometh to judge the earth. The ark in Zion is the pledge of a King who will come to judge and to gather the whole creation into the praise that Israel has only begun.

It closes on the refrain that will echo through the temple for a thousand years: O give thanks unto Yahweh; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever. David appoints the Levites before the ark at Jerusalem and the priests before the tabernacle at Gibeon — two centres of worship held until the temple unites them. The divided worship is itself a waiting: the house is not yet built, the King not yet at rest, the song not yet come home. And when the praise is done David returned to bless his house — and in it is the Lord on the great Day of Dedication adjourning to drink anew of the fruit of the vine and to bless his own.

The presence at rest means the people are fed, the covenant remembered, and the nations summoned — worship is memory pointed at a coming King.

Ezekiel 28

The chapter delivers two oracles against Tyre, and both turn on the same sin: the creature claiming to be the Creator. To the prince of Tyre Adonai Yahweh says, because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God. The whole indictment is in that last clause. Tyre’s wealth and wisdom have swollen into the oldest lie of all — that man can be as god — and the answer is the plainest fact in Scripture: thou art a man. The Hebrew is sharper than the English lets on: the king claims to be God, the Mighty One, and Yahweh answers that he is adam, earth-man — a creature, not the Mighty One he plays at being.

The second oracle, the lamentation over the king of Tyre, has been pressed by many into a story of a fallen angel. But the text names its subject — the king of Tyrus — and the frame is human pride, not a pre-Adamic rebellion in heaven. The language is the language of Eden and the sanctuary: thou hast been in Eden the garden of God, thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. Tyre is being read as a second Adam in a second Eden, a glory set in a garden and then cast out for the same reason the first man was — he reached to be more than a creature.

Read this way the passage is a mirror of Genesis 3, not a footnote about angels. The king — Ithobal — is the anti-Adam: clothed in every precious stone as Adam was clothed in glory, set on the holy mountain as Adam was set in the garden, and undone the moment iniquity was found in him. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. This is sin in the flesh at its proudest — the exaltation of self that turned a creature out of paradise, now incarnate in a Gentile commercial empire. (There is also a quieter reading of the anointed cherub that covereth — the cherub as the God who instructed Adam, Dan 4:17, rather than a title of the king himself; the two sit side by side, and either way the frame is Eden and a creature cast out, not a fallen angel.)

The contrast that lights up the chapter is Philippians 2. The prince of Tyre, being a man, said I am God. The Lord Jesus, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. The true Adam went down the road the false one would not — he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death — and was therefore exalted. Tyre grasps and is cast to the ground; Christ empties himself and is given the name above every name.

And there is a sting in the mirror. The prototype of Tyre is Israel herself — the royal priestly nation set on a holy mountain, given wisdom and beauty, and ejected when iniquity was found in her. Tyre gloated over Jerusalem’s fall (26:2) and is handed Jerusalem’s sentence. The Eden-language is not the private property of one Phoenician king; a man is in Eden whenever he reflects the sin of Adam, and the garden of Elohim has a gate that swings outward for every creature who reaches to be more than one.

The oracle ends not in Tyre but in Israel. When Yahweh has executed judgment on the proud nations round about, the pricking brier and the grieving thorn are removed from the house of Israel, and he gathers his scattered people: they shall dwell safely… and shall know that I am Yahweh their God. The briers taken out of the land are the Canaanite presence cleared at last — in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of Yahweh of hosts (Zech 14:21) — the conquest the multitudinous Christ will supervise when the proud powers round about are down. The casting-down of the man who would be god clears the ground for the people who will at last know the only One who is.

The creature who says I am God is cast out of the garden; the One who emptied himself is lifted to the throne — and between those two roads every heart must choose.

Galatians 1–2

Paul opens at a sprint, with no thanksgiving, because the gospel itself is under threat. His message, he insists, is not after man: I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Anyone proclaiming another gospel — angel from heaven included — is accursed. The stakes are absolute because the question is whether a man is justified by what Christ has done or by what he himself can perform.

He tells his own story to prove it. He had been a persecutor of the ecclesia of God, advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond his peers, zealous for the traditions of the fathers. Then Yahweh, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, revealed his Son in him. Grace reached the chief persecutor — and that is the whole logic of the letter in miniature. If law-keeping could have saved anyone it would have saved Saul of Tarsus; instead it made him the enemy of Christ until grace overruled.

In chapter 2 the issue comes to a head over circumcision and the table. At Jerusalem Titus, a Greek, is not compelled to be circumcised; the pillars add nothing to Paul’s gospel and give him the right hand of fellowship. But at Antioch Peter, who had eaten freely with the Gentiles, withdraws when men come from James, and even Barnabas is carried away. Paul withstands him to the face, because the withdrawal proclaimed a false gospel with the feet — that Gentiles were second-class until they took on the law.

The doctrine Paul plants against it is the centre of the letter: a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. If righteousness came by law, then Christ is dead in vain. The offering of Christ is either everything or it is nothing; there is no covenant in which it is a helpful addition to human performance.

And then the verse the whole letter circles: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. This is the Christadelphian frame exactly — not a substitute dying in the believer’s place while the believer looks on, but the believer identified with Christ, dead with him and alive with his life. The old man is put to death in the one who is joined to Christ by faith and baptism; the life that remains is no longer his own self-righteous striving but Christ living in him. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Grace reached the man the law could never save, and the life that follows is not his own performance but Christ living in him — add law to that and you empty the offering.